


Where Did It All Go So Wrong?

by josephina_x



Series: Choice and Consequence [2]
Category: Smallville, Smallville Season 11 (Comics)
Genre: (as usual), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Haunted Arc, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:22:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex should know better than to mess with memory machines. But then, who said all his choices were bad ones?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Did It All Go So Wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Where Did It All Go So Wrong?  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville, Smallville Season 11  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex, Clark/Lois (implied)  
> Rating: R (for language)  
> Spoilers: general through the entire series, and general through the third arc of the comic; goes AU before the end of the third arc  
> Word count: 5200+  
> Summary: Lex should know better than to mess with memory machines. But then, who said all his choices were bad ones?  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Technically is in the same series as "Good Christian Men, Rejoice!" but can be read standalone (and so can the other one).

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex grumbled and coughed where he'd fallen to the floor. He knew he'd fallen, because he was aching like he had.

He levered himself up on an elbow, coughed again, and grimaced as he squinted through the smoke around the wrecked room, wincing at every flash of electricity that arced between the frayed and snapped wires dangling from the ceiling and the charred plastic-and-metal equipment strewn about the room, only half of which was still standing, even at a tilt, and none of the rest of it even recognizeable.

His mind was reeling, and he felt more than a little unsteady. He had to grab at the somewhat-upright metallic medical slab twice -- before he really focused on what he was doing and managed a secure grip with his gloved right hand. He clenched his teeth and bit down a soft hiss at the pain that traveled up his arm as he tightened his grip. _That's not good._

"All part of the plan, right Luthor?" he heard sardonically.

Lex frowned and looked up, then blinked and peered through the smoke. Tess.

"You tell me," Lex said with a grimace and another cough, then snaked out his free hand and grabbed her right arm. Her eyes went wide, and she nearly her lost balance and tilted forward into him, but between his hold on both her and the medical slab, Lex managed to stagger upright and half-caught her against his shoulder before he was done.

" _Let go of me!_ " she hissed, pushing against him.

Lex frowned and let her pull back from him, but didn't let go of her wrist.

He opened his mouth to--

\--then was distracted by the rattling explosion that sounded like it'd happened two rooms away.

 _Shit,_ Lex thought, not even bothering to duck, instead opting to glance around as his mind cleared a little. This damage looked like it could've come from an extreme generator overload, coupled with a Kryptonite-induced power surge. The perpetrator was probably headed their way, so--

Lex pulled Tess along as he sprinted for the doors. Another explosion, closer.

He slapped the door panel. Nothing.

His lips curled back from his teeth as he _punched_ the panel, _hard_ , **completely** ignoring the pain in his right hand as he did so, and the door slammed open with a protest, the emergency backups doing their work, _thank god_.

Lex shoved Tess through in front of him and rounded the doorframe.

Another explosion -- _right across from them in the room they'd just exited_ \-- and the shockwave would've forced Lex out the door and had him sliding across the floor if he hadn't ducked out of the doorway, farther into the hallway in time.

He cursed as he hit the panel and tapped in a code with blurry eyes. A door triple-reinforced with steel slammed shut on an angry howl.

There was a pounding noise behind the door, but it was holding.

Lex backed up until he was against the far wall of the hallway, tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and blew out a breath, relaxing a little.

Then he cracked open his eyes again and turned his head to look at his little half-sis, at his side.

He frowned.

"Who bled out all over you?"

Tess stared at him.

Then she laughed.

"You just _had_ to do it, didn't you?" she said with a grin. "You went and fried your brain again!"

Lex's frown deepened.

" _You_ stabbed me, Lex," she said with a snarl, losing her temper after failing to get the desired rise out of him, he presumed.

"I very much doubt that," Lex said. "That may look somewhat realistic," he said with a lazy gesture at the small slit in the front of the trenchcoat at gut level, "but if that were an actual wound you wouldn't be standing, and with that much blood loss you'd be far more pale than you look presently," he pointed out.

Tess stared at him and her mouth dropped slightly open.

Then she snapped it shut and clenched her jaw as though she wasn't about to say anything further, lest she be caught out at something.

Lex sighed and pushed off from the wall. "Come on," he said, grabbing her left wrist this time, despite the pain in his right hand, and tugged her along marginally more gently this time.

"Why?" she said, digging in her heels and being contrary. He wondered what he'd done. ...Or, perhaps, had Oliver somehow won her over to his side again?

"Because that door won't hold for much longer," Lex pointed out. "It'll start to buckle soon."

Tess scoffed, then flinched as the next slamming sound shook the door badly. The next slamming produced a creaking noise and a rather large dent.

"Come _on_ ," Lex repeated, having gotten his bearings, and turned away to tug her towards where he knew the elevators were on that sublevel, once more.

...at least until he was hit with a dizzy spell.

Smoke and flames around them flickered into a cornfield on fire, swaying in the breeze under a dark grey sky.

Lex gritted his teeth and staggered, bracing his left hand against the wall, until it fell away from him. Dirt ring and an absent scarecrow.

Stay, or go.

I won't leave you here all alone.

Run.

_Choose._

"Lex?"

He blinked and the cornfield disappeared between the darkness behind his eyes and the light of the corridor when he reopened them. He found himself sagging against the wall, hunched forward, sweating slightly, holding himself up almost entirely by his entire left forearm, which was plastered against it.

He let himself breath heavily through his mouth and blinked a few times.

He chose to run.

"'M fine; keep moving," he told her, forcing himself to stand upright, square his shoulders, and forge ahead, dragging her along with him at a brisk walk, then a jog, and then a run.

They rounded a corner, and Lex heard the tell-tale sounds of a very sturdy door being forced from its tracks, ripping out of its hinges with a metal-on-metal _shriek_ and slamming into the opposite wall with a loud and concussive bang.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They were in a race for the elevators down a maze of corridors, and so long as their pursuer didn't know where they were, they'd probably be able to escape him ...assuming he didn't cheat and start forcing himself through walls in their general direction again, anyway.

They were getting close when Lex rounded a corner and nearly bowled over a man in a sweater-vest of a highly-unsuitable yellow-green, clutching a tablet. Lex was barely able to stagger sideways around him in time, and and slid to a halt in the process.

The man blinked at him, but Lex didn't waste time with pleasantries. "Not this way," he informed him, and spun him by a shoulder, pushing him ahead. "We're moving for the--"

"--elevator bank, yes," the man said, picking up speed in the right direction alongside Lex as he himself sped up. "I was looking for you, sir."

Lex blinked, but squirreled that information away in the back of his mind for later.

They finally, _finally_ reached the damn things, and Lex slapped the call button hard. The doors opened immediately, which gave him a second's mental pause, because _that_ had him wondering if the man -- Otis, by the LuthorCorp badge on his belt loop -- had actually taken the elevator _down into danger_ to try to find and help him.

It reminded him uncomfortably of a set of underground tunnels under Smallville, and a certain young male Kent in particular.

Lex shook the thought away, dragged Tess into the elevator with them -- Otis certainly hadn't needed cajoling -- and hit the button for the ground floor.

Nothing happened.

_Shit._

Lex tried again for good measure, then tried a few others. Nothing. The doors wouldn't even close.

Lex cursed under his breath, let go of Tess, and started patting down his pockets. _Double-shit. What the hell was I thinking?_

He ignored the approaching explosive clamor, and instead opted to turn on his heel and pluck the tablet computer from Otis' grasp.

"...Sir?" he heard behind him as he turned back to the panel.

"I need it," he said succinctly, as he raised the thing up over his head and then slammed it into the slightly protruding elevator control panel by its thinnest edge.

It caught. _Thank god._

Lex worked at slamming a palm down into the far end of it, wedging it in farther and farther, then began to work it side-to-side, then back and forth, using it like a lever to pry the panel off of the elevator wall.

Once he had it in far enough, he took a breath, thought a quick throwaway Hail Mary or two, and slammed his hand flat against the protruding screen, towards the elevator wall.

The screen cracked, but the casing held strong, and with a metallic groan the panel popped partway off.

Lex grabbed the tablet up and passed it back to the man standing behind him, curled him fingers into the gap, braced a foot against the wall, and wrenched at it, ripping the panel halfway out of the wall.

There was a low bell chime, and the elevator doors slammed shut.

Lex grinned, braced the somewhat loose panel with his knee as he reached in with both hands, and got to work on the wiring.

He ripped out a particular set, ignored the sparks, and twisted a few together. Another strand he started carefully tapping against other interior leads. He then went on to...

"What are you doing?"

"Getting around the lockdown," he told Tess absently as he continued what he was doing, mentally working his way down the checklist. "The override should--"

The overhead lights flickered three times in rapid succession, and Lex smirked. "There we go." He pulled his hands out of the guts of the interior panel, and said, "Hold on."

There was a clunking noise, and he had a second to hold the panel and the interior railing, and get both feet on the floor before the elevator started accelerating upwards rapidly, screeching up the shaft at faster-than-normal operational speed.

Lex laughed slightly as the he slammed the panel back into place, hit a few floor buttons in rapid succession, and listened to the sounds echoing up the shaft of multiple isolation doors slamming shut below them, one after the other after the other, as the emergency code was accepted by the system.

He glanced back at Otis and Tess, to see the looks on their faces at the slight shuddering of the car and the speed of the elevator on ascent. Otis was clutching his broken tablet, staring at the floor and looking a little green. Tess was just leaning back, braced against the sidewall, hands gripped the opposite railing, looking surprised, and maybe a little aghast.

Lex frowned slightly at Tess' non-reaction. Why wasn't she more afraid, or at least a little off-balance? She hadn't acted worried when they'd been being pursued down the corridors with deadly intent, either.

"Do you have a deathwish?" Lex asked her honestly, and garnered a strange look from her before her expression twisted fair foul in anger.

Lex simply sighed and started counting the seconds while he waited for the elevator to begin to decelerate to a stop at ground floor level. He wasn't sure exactly what he was missing, but it had to be important.

...He wondered exactly how much memory he'd been missing and trying to retrieve this time. He couldn't remember wanting to get any memories back, or how he'd gotten to that lab, but clearly the procedure must have been interrupted partway through, given the state of the lab upon awakening and the confused state of his own mind.

The accompanying headache was also a pretty good indication of that, too. So was the new logo on the "LexCorp" badge and how it also seemed to give access to the LuthorCorp Towers office space -- else, how would Otis have gotten downstairs to where he had been? The corporate photo ID badge, for all its unfamiliarity of design, didn't look fake.

"What is the date?" he asked Otis, as the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors slid open.

"It's--" was all that Otis managed to say before he blanched a pasty white.

Lex, puzzled, turned to look ahead of him as he stepped out of the elevator--

\--and right into a certain intrepid reporter's hands, who was unaccountably standing in the middle of his lobby, facing them.

 _Ah,_ Lex thought grimly. That would certainly account for the look of shock and outright _horror_ that had passed across his employee's face.

"Lane," Lex said neutrally, taking a few steps forward, before realizing that, while Otis was following his example, however timidly, Tess was hanging back.

Lex fought down a sigh and a grimace, but didn't bother to keep himself from rolling his eyes as he turned and strode back into the elevator. He grabbed Tess by the arm and manhandled her back out again, drawing up next to Otis before letting her go.

...Why was he being stared at by all three of them like he was out of his fucking mind?

Lex frowned, and was about to tell them all off, when the floor shuddered slightly under their feet and he heard the telltale sounds of someone -- or some _thing_ \-- tearing their way through a bulkhead below.

_\-- **bang!** \--_

Or two.

_\-- **wham!** \--_

...Or three.

"Damnit," Lex muttered. "Excuse me for a moment," he said a little louder, turning and walking back towards the elevator with grim intent.

He reached in, pressed two buttons at the same time, then pulled back just before the elevator doors slammed shut with an audible bang.

He took a step back, then rotated on one foot and kicked the call button with his heel as hard as he possibly could.

The panel cracked, the floor indicator above the elevator turned red, and there was a twanging noise.

And then a screeching of metal as the car accelerated back down the shaft.

Lex gave the panel a wolf's grin for a moment, before composing himself and walking back to the others.

"Additional safety measure," he explained casually, tugging at his shirt cuffs lightly. "Did you want something, Miss Lane?"

"...Did you just cut the cables on that elevator?" Lois asked, eyes wide.

"No, of course not -- don't be silly," Lex said. "It's much more dangerous to have an elevator car going _down_ the shaft at-speed; gravity alone will only get it moving so fast, so quickly." At Lane's blank look, he added patiently, "It's difficult to accelerate something downwards faster than gravity without something like an attached cable to forcibly pull it down even faster."

Lois stared at him.

There was a loud crash. Lex let out a sigh.

"Now then--" Lex began, looking to Lane.

There was a tearing-screeching sound.

Lex paused.

He slowly turned.

There was a slamming sound and he saw the elevator door bend outwards.

Then it buckled inwards and nearly tore out entirely.

A very angry individual floated up out of the shaft, eyes blazing, and landed on the ground feet-first.

Several guards ran forward, pullling guns.

"Stop," Lex called out, but no-one did, and Lex gritted his teeth as a fight broke out in earnest. He hated being ignored, especially by a pack of idiots.

"Oh for god's sake," Lex muttered, side-stepping to avoid one of the guards, who had hit the floor hard and was unconscious even before the guard's body came to a skidding stop next to him.

Lex reached down and pulled a handgun from the guard's second holster, then straightened.

"Simon, what the hell..." Lex muttered as the man finished tossing his security guards around with his psychokinesis.

" _LUTHOR!!_ " the late Dr. Simon Jones yelled as he whirled in place, still on the ground for now and panting heavily, and refocused on Lex.

Lex stared him down, neither impressed or amused, and raised his gun.

"Wh--?!?" Simon yelped, flinching backwards.

Lex fired straight up.

The bullet hit a sprinkler head and started spurting water.

"Shit--!!" Simon cursed, flinging up a stronger force shield in front of him. "You b--!" he glared at Lex, then his eyes widened as Lex brought his gun back down.

"Tch!" Simon scoffed. "You can't--!" he snarled out, reinforcing the front of his mental force bubble.

Lex calmly fired over Simon's head, into the wall above the elevator bank.

His second shot hit the sprinkler head behind Simon, and set off _all_ the sprinklers, including that one in particular.

"GHAHHHAHHHAH!" Simon screamed, as the water got through the too-weak barrier of ionized energy he'd been holding at his back.

The poor bastard collapsed on the floor, twitching and whimpering as the water hit the tender, exposed parts of his cerebrospinal fluid brain-barrier.

Lex stared down at the man, who was ineffectually trying to cover his head with his arms and get his psychokinetic barrier back up. It wasn't working. He couldn't focus enough through the pain.

Lex casually tossed the gun to the side, slid his hands into his pockets, and waited a good twenty seconds, while other security guards emerged and pulled their fellows to (relative) safety. No-one came anywhere near Simon.

Lex sighed as a few more guards approached with some rather more powerful weaponry, and waved them aside.

He raised his hands and began to slip off his coat-jacket, stepping forward.

"What are you doing--?" he heard Tess say behind him.

Lex finished removing his coat, turned it in his hands and, holding it by the lapels, flicked it outwards like he would if spreading a sheet and guided it down over Simon's head and shoulders.

He finished in a crouch and, knowing full well that he'd be soaked thoroughly through by the time anyone managed to get the sprinkler system turned off and reset -- it was a _very_ efficient system -- he took a knee in a puddle, kneeling before Simon, and helped him to a seated position, getting his arms up and braced to hold the coat like a makeshift umbrella.

Simon blinked and slowly came to, then stared up at Lex in blank confusion.

Then, as his brain was no longer being subjected to the water pressure, his head came up and he glared at Lex.

Lex repeated, again, in perfectly reasonable tones, feeling a bit tired at this point, "Simon, _what_ the _hell?_ "

Simon lost the glare, startled, and he focused fully on Lex in the way he did when using his telepathy.

Simon's eyes widened.

"Oh, shit," Simon whispered, looking a little freaked, and leaning away from him.

Lex sighed.

"--I didn't kill anyone," Simon said sullenly, hunching his shoulders.

"This time," Lex said, eyeing him.

Simon snapped his mouth shut, then glared. "It's all your fault!"

Lex gave him a long, bland look.

"Well, it is!" he griped.

Lex sighed, again, and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was beginning to have all the hallmarks of a really bad day. Damnit.

"Simon," Lex asked in smooth, patient tones, "What were you doing downstairs?"

"I--"

"Because you know you're not supposed to be down there," Lex continued.

"That's not--!" Simon began, then snapped his mouth shut. "Oh, shiiiit," he verbally and mentally backpedaled, but Lex was giving him the gimlet eye and wasn't having anything for it.

"Simon. What, _exactly_ , is all my fault?" Lex asked lightly, which anybody who knew him -- or could sense what he was feeling telepathically -- knew full well was a warning sign.

"Uhhhhh," Simon gulped, before he revived a little backbone and forged ahead belligerently. "You forgot, like, damn near everything!" he complained. "And then we had to break out--"

Lex's eyes narrowed.

"-- _not_ what it sounds like, that Tess-bitch tried to blow us up--" Simon continued hurriedly.

"-- _What?!?_ " Lex grated out, eyes widening. He resisted the urge to shoot to his feet and stalk forward to strangle his half-sister for her idiocy, but only barely.

"She fucking chipped the entire Black Creek branch-resident population with explosives and GPS trackers," Simon complained. " _In their brains._ She got all the mutants and the 'freaks, none-the-wiser, said it was just the usual full-body workups _with docs she trusted_ ," he sneered, "but I know when somebody's fucking around in my head. She was dumb enough to leave off the power-restrictors, so I expelled it right outta me--"

"Good," Lex said.

"--and dug it out of the others," Simon continued.

"Fuck," Lex said quietly, " _all_ of the others?" He completely ignored the rising noise level coming from the Lane woman. She was hardly important at the moment; damage control was. Simon considered himself on-par with the rest of the Project ARES group, and not-a-one in any of the other groups in that section of 33.1 ...which meant that _the others_ he was referring to were--

"Better than fucking _leaving it in!_ " Simon objected.

Lex sighed and waved a hand in vague agreement. Threatening some of those types with obedience-or-brain-death would have either had some of the worst of the psychopaths dealing as much damage as possible before they were dropped, which would have been bad, or some of the most-reserved of the rest toeing the line, which would have been even worse.

"I take it the others are not downstairs," Lex said grimly.

" _Fuck_ no," Simon said. "We got loose, and we tried to go to the General like you told us to if things went south," he griped, "but goddamn Checkmate caught up with us and picked us up first, and _it's all your fault_ ," Simon hissed out, pissed off all over again.

Lex blankly thought _Checkmate?_ and got a vague feeling that this had _something_ do to with Tess, but...

Lex grimaced, his headache momentarily getting worse.

He focused through the haze and realized Simon was watching him, looking almost a little...

Lex smiled thinly. "Simon," he said, "the day _you_ start showing me concern--"

"Fuck _that_ ," Simon scoffed grimly, though it was only a thin veneer over what he'd been showing before. Damn.

"Did all of you get out?" Lex asked, because there were higher priorities right now -- his people over his short-term well-being.

Simon straightened slightly.

"Checkmate got broken in half," he said shortly, with a little satisfaction, then grimaced. "Things got... hairy after that. Lunatic-bitch new-management, same as the old-bitch management," he said darkly, shrugging one shoulder. "Some of us got out, got far enough away..."

"That still doesn't explain how you ended up in the lower levels here," Lex put forth patiently, then paused as something entered his peripherial vision.

He glanced to his left and got a slight smile at the closed mechanical umbrella being proferred to him by Otis.

 _Good man,_ Lex thought. "Thank you," he murmured out loud, taking the umbrella from him and opening it up.

And then Lex offered the open umbrella to Simon.

Simon stared at him for a moment, then at the handle, and then his shoulders slumped and he got a tired but relieved smile. He carefully lowered the coat from over his head and took the umbrella from Lex, and Lex retrieved his coat from Simon and gently tossed it over his shoulder, careful not to fling water droplets outward as he did so, holding it by a finger or two.

He rose to his feet and offered Simon a hand, and, once Simon was upright on shaky feet, they both moved to standing closer to the center of the lobby, where the only water spraying down was from above.

Lex stayed well out from under the umbrella, giving Simon his space -- he was already soaked through and through, and Simon needed the berth just in case -- the water wouldn't hurt Lex, after all.

"Lower levels?" Lex prompted.

"Uh, yeah..." Simon said, looking a little... abashed. "I, uh, kind of lost my temper and..."

"--He should be in Stryker's!" Lane cut in, managing to push her way free and out of the grip of two of his security guards for a moment.

 _Ah,_ Lex thought, finally having to pay attention to the ruckus the Lane woman was making, and had been for some time. He absently wondered if gagging her was a viable option, or if the usual 'freedom of the press' folks might take horrible offense.

...Well, only if they didn't know her, perhaps.

Lex turned his head and looked sidelong at Simon.

"It was just property damage, mostly. --I didn't kill anyone!" Simon yelped.

"Not for lack of trying, Si-mon!" Lane yelled back, and it was odd the way she'd stretched out his name...

Lex blinked then gave him a narrow-eyed _look_.

" **'Psi'** mon? _Really?_ " Lex drawled.

"Shutup," Simon glowered, hunching his shoulders. "--And it's not like you care," Simon shot back at Lane. "You hate him!"

"Simon..." Lex said slowly, turning to face him.

Simon glanced at Lex, then quickly away and snapped his mouth shut.

_Right._

Lex sighed.

"Was I pressing charges?" Lex asked.

"No," muttered Simon. "City was, though."

They all glanced upwards as the sprinklers turned off, finally. Simon slowly lowered the umbrella.

"I'll see if I can't have a talk with someone about that," Lex said.

Simon turned and stared at him.

Then Lex realized something and almost kicked himself.

 _Never assume._ Simon had fled the project; he didn't work for Lex anymore. --In fact, Lex must have been gone and/or missing for at least a year, given the scattered events Simon had recounted. Events just didn't move that quickly in corporate America; Tess wouldn't have had that level of control right away.

Lex couldn't recount anything from before his last memory scan in the newest Summerholt device, right before he'd been headed for the Arctic. The last thing he'd gotten done before lying down had been to finalize his instructions for his orders to reopen that last-resort cloning project and get it underway. ...This, of course, meant that either he'd been memory-wiped by Kal-El upon arrival and detained, or he himself might be a clone.

He held that last thought at the forefront of his mind as Simon stared at him, until Simon gave him a small shrug. The man didn't really care one way or the other about it.

Good.

"Simon, do you want to rejoin the project?" Lex asked him.

Simon's eyes widened.

"Yes!" he said quickly.

Lex smiled.

It was all about giving them the choice. He'd learned that lesson from his first lessons in management at Plant No. 3, and he'd never forgotten it. _Give people a choice, let them make it, and respect that choice. Then deal with the consequences together._ He had to give trust to get it, and give respect to gain it.

"I'll see about getting personnel to pay off the damages to the cty," Lex said. "That ought to head off most of the worst charges as a start."

It didn't always work. People didn't always choose him. But, when they did, he gained loyal employees who'd fight for him to the death. So, in a sense...

Simon began to smile, then grin. He practically glowed with relief, and he straightened by Lex's side.

It always worked.

"--What?!?" gasped Lane, a little slow on the uptake, perhaps? "You can't do that!!"

"Of course I can," Lex waved off. He'd made it standard practice a good while ago to have some rather... _special considerations_... written into a few innocuous-seeming addendums that were consistently included within more than a few city contracts regarding his personnel. And, so long as those city contracts for the monetary help and manpower he was donating for those public services were still in effect...

Lex's smile twitched upwards into a smirk as he exchanged a glance with Simon.

"That's illlegal!"

"No, it isn't," Lex said, getting bored with her already. He motioned to the two security guards to grab her again and--

The glass front of the building _shattered_.

Lex stared as a man dressed in cape and tights and-- and-- _oh my god, is that a real superhero!?!?_ \-- landed on the floor right in front of him.

And then he straightened.

Lex, master of tactics that he was, began to laugh hysterically.

"That-- that-- _you--!_ " He doubled over, pointing and giggling and pretty much making out like he'd completely lost it.

Which he had a bit, but only because he was letting himself indulge. He really needed the time to think.

And it went a little something like this:

_What the hell-- **Clark?!?** What is he-- wait-- he was floating-- bastard can totally fly-- hold on that sigil is-- shit, he's Kryptonian-- shit, he's probably **Kal-El** \-- fuck I probably ran into him in the Arctic-- oh goddamnit I don't have any meteor rock on me-- need to **STALL--**_

Luckily, the laughing seemed to be working out for him, because Clark was slowly turning the bright red of embarassment, rather than fury.

Lois looked sympathetically angry _for_ Clark, though, for all that she was dripping wet as the rest of them -- and apparently wearing lacy underthings, too, if the outline of her clinging shirt was any indication. Lex spared a thought to feel a little exasperated about the fact that such a fine female body was wasted on such a sour bitch as he straightened and wiped the tears from his eyes, and some of the water from his face while he was at it.

Tess stared at him, a little pasty-fced, then sneered. "God, you are such an idiot," she said disgustedly.

"Shut up, Tess," Lex said absently.

Everyone turned and stared at him.

Then Lane pointed at him with vicious glee and yelled "Aha! I knew it!"

Lex frowned.

"Tess?" Clark said. "I thought Tess was dead." And then he glared at Lex.

Lex glanced sideways at Simon.

"Dunno when it started," he said under his breath, "But you were seeing her a couple months ago. Bet your assitant knows," he added, glancing over to Lex's left, where Otis had inched over to him, holding a new tablet and seemingly ready to assist in any way he might be called upon to do so.

"You're not hallucinating her, Mr. Luthor. Her memories are in your head," Otis said almost apologetically.

Lex gave Otis a look, because, _really? how did **that** happen?_ \-- someone must be putting him on, because, come on, why the hell would he want _her_ memories?

Besides, she'd felt pretty damn solid to him when he'd been dragging her about.

Lois took that as a signal to began to bicker with Clark -- ah, excuse him, " _Superman_ ", the uber-colored one -- about what she'd "found out so far" about him and Tess, and Lex felt a headache coming on. So while Otis physically moved to stand in front of him -- gutsy man, Lex couldn't possibly be paying him enough for that -- and then further tried to fend off the two of them, Lex took advantage of their distraction: he casually lowered his jacket from his shoulder and tossed it at Tess.

It went straight through her and hit the lobby floor with a wet thump.

Lex stood there and stared at the jacket. Then he stared up at Tess.

Tess smirked at him and folded her arms.

...Well, fuck.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Dang, almost forgot the 'Psimon' bit! (Lex is not amused.) Added! *g*


End file.
